Dalian
— — a northern port that remembers being European.
Not only on a wall.
“A port city on the Yellow Sea at the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, with stone tram tracks running past Russian and Japanese facades the twentieth century left behind. Zhongshan Square radiates ten streets like spokes, ringed by banks built in the 1900s. South along the coast, Xinghai Square opens onto a stretch of seafront that draws weekend crowds for kite-flying and shellfish from the morning catch. Dalian wears its layers in the open — colonial, industrial, modern — and the harbour wind keeps the summer cool. from the studio
Dalian, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Dalian sits at the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula in Liaoning Province, on the warm-water coast where the Yellow Sea meets the Bohai. The municipality covers roughly 13,000 square kilometres and holds a population of around seven million. It was founded as a Russian-leased port in 1898 under the name Dalny, taken by Japan after 1905 and rebuilt as Dairen, and returned to Chinese administration in 1955. Today it is the largest port in northeast China, the seat of Dalian Maritime University, and the country's principal hub for shipping to Japan and Korea.
The two great civic squares anchor the old city. Zhongshan Square, laid out by the Russians in 1899 as Nikolayevskaya Square, is a 213-metre circle radiating ten streets, ringed by ten early-twentieth-century buildings in Renaissance, Gothic, and Art Nouveau dress, several of which still operate as banks. Three kilometres south along the coast, Xinghai Square opened in 1997 and covers about 1.1 million square metres, with a paved central plaza that for years held the title of the largest city square in Asia. Between them, the original tram line, opened in 1909, still runs vintage cars along Zhongshan Road.
Summers along the Dalian coast run cooler than most of inland China — daytime highs of about 25 to 28 degrees Celsius in July and August, with a sea breeze that keeps the humidity bearable. The Dalian International Beer Festival fills Xinghai Square for twelve days each July or August, drawing more than a million visitors. Autumn from late September through early November is the steadier season for the coastline, with cleaner air and water still warm enough for the swimming beaches at Fujiazhuang and Bangchuidao. Winters are dry, cold, and windy off the Bohai, and the harbour rarely freezes.